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In Pilgrim’s Wilderness, veteran Alaska journalist Tom Kizzia unfolds the remarkable, at times harrowing, story of a charismatic spinner of American myths who was not what he seemed, the townspeople caught in his thrall, and the family he brought to the brink of ruin. As Kizzia discovered, Papa Pilgrim was in fact the son of a rich Texas family with ties to Hoover’s FBI and strange, oblique connections to the Kennedy assassination and the movie stars of Easy Rider. And as his fight with the government in Alaska grew more intense, the turmoil in his brood made it increasingly difficult to tell whether his children were messianic followers or hostages in desperate need of rescue. In this powerful piece of Americana, written with uncommon grace and high drama, Kizzia uses his unparalleled access to capture an era-defining clash between environmentalists and pioneers ignited by a mesmerizing sociopath who held a town and a family captive.
“A journalist’s gripping account of a modern fundamentalist Christian pioneer family and the dark secrets that held it together…Provocative and disturbing.”–Kirkus Reviews
"Strong work of reportage... [Papa Pilgrim's] intriguing past crumbles in comparison to his excruciating cruelty and to the inspiring grace and strength of his children."–Booklist
“The riveting story of a megalomaniacal sociopath who left a trail of woe from Texas to the Great White North, Pilgrim’s Wilderness lends credence to the maxim that the unadulterated truth, when conveyed with sufficient skill, is not only more illuminating than fiction, but also more entertaining. Tom Kizzia has written an uncommonly insightful book about post-frontier Alaska, an ambitious literary work disguised as a page-turner, very much in the tradition of Edward Hoagland’s Notes From the Century Before and John McPhee’s Coming into the Country.” –Jon Krakauer, author of Into the Wild and Under the Banner of Heaven
"This is a riveting, mesmerizing story, stunning and eloquent all at the same time. I simply couldn't put it down." —Ken Burns, filmmaker, The Civil War and The National Parks: America's Best Idea
“Tom Kizzia's superb book is startling, unpredictable, haunting, clear-eyed, unrelenting, sad, and beautiful. Pilgrim's Wilderness, in other words, is like Alaska itself, a subject the author understands deeply and evokes with uncommon skill.” – David Maraniss, author of When Pride Still Mattered and They Marched into Sunlight
“What an epic story – sociopathy and crazy ideology hits the final frontier. Jon Krakauer couldn’t have done it any better.” – Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth and Deep Economy
“Pilgrim’s Wilderness is a fine book, methodically narrating a tale of libertarianism gone haywire on a genuine frontier.” – Edward Hoagland, author of Children Are Diamonds
“Pilgrim’s Wilderness is a terrifying masterpiece, elegantly written, painstakingly researched, and impossible to put down. Tom Kizzia has created a classic American Gothic, chilling, irresistible and wise.” – Blaine Harden, author of Escape from Camp 14
“Tom Kizzia’s Pilgrim’s Wilderness is a bizarre and twisted Alaska saga of mythic proportions. This nonfiction gem has ‘Hollywood hit’ written all over it. Once you start reading, you won’t be able to put it down.” – Douglas Brinkley, author of The Quiet World
“There isn't a bad sentence in Pilgrim’s Wilderness, not a dull page or sour note. A masterpiece of reporting and storytelling.” – Zev Chafets, author of Cooperstown Confidential and A Match Made in Heaven
“The bizarre and tragic true story that unfolds in the pages of this extraordinary book is like nothing else I have ever read. Through prodigious research, blending compassion with investigative skill, Tom Kizzia has woven a mythic tale out of that most mythic of American landscapes – Alaska.” – David Roberts, author of Alone on the Ice
“Tom Kizzia hasn't just observed and written about Alaska for three-plus decades, he's lived it. Pilgrim's Wilderness is a story that needed to be told by the only man who could tell it.” – Tom Bodett, author of Williwaw! and The End of the Road
“Alaska as a land of self-invention and frontier contradictions has never been better captured than in Pilgrim’s Wilderness. Tom Kizzia, “Neighbor Tom” to the enigmatic figure at the center of this riveting story, combines an insider’s view with thorough and compassionate investigative reporting. This fascinating, harrowing, ultimately redemptive, and beautifully written account is sure to become a classic.” – Nancy Lord, former Alaska Writer Laureate and author of Fish Camp, Beluga Days and Early Warming
“In Pilgrim's Wilderness Tom Kizzia uncovers the tragic confrontation between America's frontier past and its settled future. "The Last Frontier" is the hot bed and Alaskans probably the most divided and conflicted of all. Mix this with the attraction that frontiers have for the unstable, darker forces in the human personality and we get the startling case of Papa Pilgrim and his family, as well as a hell of a yarn.” —Carl Pope, former executive director of The Sierra Club and author of Strategic Ignorance
“A stunning and downright scary tale by one of Alaska's most knowledgeable journalists. Tom Kizzia's investigative talents and his love of America's frontier state come through clearly in this true story that reads like a novel.” –James Risser, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting
"Pilgrim’s Wilderness is not a book -- it’s a powerful magnet, and once you begin you will not be able to pull yourself away. This spellbinding, shocking, and, yes, inspirational story of a family’s journey into the heart of darkness delivers the raw power and revelatory truth of a Scorcese film. Except better, because every word is true." –Daniel Coyle,author of The Secret Race and The Talent Code.
“Sends readers on a roller-coaster ride that is as thrilling as it is shocking. Kizzia’s work is a testament to both the cruelty and resiliency of the human spirit, capturing the sort of life-and-death struggle that can only occur on the fringes of modern-day civilization.” –Publishers Weekly
From the Hardcover edition.
Prologue: Third Month
When the song of the snowmachine had faded down the valley, the sisters got ready to go. Elishaba moved quickly through the morning cold and snow in heavy boots, insulated pants beneath her prairie skirt, ferrying provisions from the cabin - raisins, sleeping bags, two white sheets. Jerusalem and Hosanna tore through the tool shed looking for a spark plug. The plugs had been pulled from the old Ski-Doo Tundras that morning to prevent escape.
It was late in the third month and the days in Alaska were growing longer. The overcast was high, the temperature holding above zero. They knew they didn't have much time.
Mountains squeezed the sky above the old mining cabin. Behind, a glacial cirque climbed to God's white throne. For weeks, Elishaba had been looking up, praying at the summits and calculating the odds. But she knew there was only one way out. The only trail, the one that had brought their family the attention they used to shun, ran thirteen miles down the canyon, slicing through avalanche zones and criss-crossing the frozen creek until it reached a ghost town.
McCarthy was once a boom town of bootleggers and prostitutes. These days it was the only place in the Wrangell Mountains that could still be called a community, though a mere handful of settlers remained all winter. At first that isolation had been the attraction. The Pilgrim Family had traveled thousands of miles to reach the end of the road in Alaska. They had parked their trucks at the river and crossed a footbridge into town and continued on horseback and snowmachine and bulldozer and foot to their new home.
Now McCarthy burned in the girls' imaginations not as the end of the road but as a beginning.
Psalms and Lamb and Abraham looked on in horror. Their big sisters weren't even supposed to be speaking out loud. They had been put on silence. Yet here was Elishaba, calling out as she moved to and from the cabin, as if she no longer cared that they would report her.
Elishaba was the oldest of the fifteen brothers and sisters, a pretty, dark-eyed, dark-haired young woman, strong from a lifetime of homestead chores, from wrangling horses and hunting game - not a girl at all, at twenty-nine years, though she had never lived away from her family, never whispered secrets at a friend's house or flirted with a boy. She had been raised in isolation, sheltered from the evil world - no television, no newspapers, no books, schooled only in survival and a dark exegesis of God's portents. She was the special daughter, chosen according to the Bible's solemn instruction. Her legal name was Butterfly Sunstar.
She gave the children a brave and reassuring smile. They could see now that she was weeping and frightened and that she did indeed still care. She cared about what would happen if she were caught. She was pretty sure she would not survive her punishment. But she also cared about how angry God might be if she succeeded and escaped into the world. all her life she had been taught that leaving would be the most forbidden sin. The punishment for that could turn out to be something infinitely worse.
Her sisters looked happy, though. Hosanna had found a spark plug. Perhaps their enterprise was favored after all. Jerusalem - short, blond and cherub-cheeked, at sixteen the second-oldest girl - had declared she would not let Elishaba go alone.
Elishaba and Jerusalem said swift goodbyes and climbed together on the little Tundra and lurched down the trail.
They made it no farther than the open snow in the first muskeg swamp. The snowmachine lurched to a stop. The fanbelt had...
Anonymous
Posted Thu Jul 18 00:00:00 EDT 2013
I Also Recommend:
Papa Pilgrim kept his family under close control by the use of his version of Christianity and violence, even incest. It is fascinating and frightening but it is hard to stop reading it. Alas, it is all true. If you like books like true crime novels; if you like reading outdoor adventure stories; then this book is for you. There is not a boring page to be found.
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted Thu Jul 18 00:00:00 EDT 2013
A Harrowing Frontier Tale of the Perverse Pilgrim Clan
Kizzia, in this beautifully written piece of nonfiction, captures the essence of the perverse Pilgrim clan that has indelibly marked Alaska and it no doubt will be remembered in tales of mythic proportion. Papa Pilgrim along with his wife and fifteen children sold themselves as a moralistic pack of holy-rollers when they first moved to Alaska; however, that façade soon vanished.
The family Patriarch, calling himself Papa Pilgrim, whose previous pregnant wife was found mysteriously shot in the head, had a less than upright past. After settling in McCarthy, Alaska, Papa Pilgrim decided to bulldoze a road into a state park and setup a meager one-room homestead there much to the government’s and neighbors’ dismay.
In harmony with outward unrest that the Pilgrim homestead created, much was amiss within it. Pilgrim’s children were illiterate and sexually abused—many argue whether they were hostages or proud followers of their patriarch. In a land of seemingly endless frontier and self-invention, Papa Pilgrim pushed to the limits and ignited endless conflicts.
Kizzia’s true account is one that captures the harrowing results of perverted libertarianism. A sense of place and landscape plays an integral role in this page-turner, as Alaska is in many ways a final frontier. If you enjoy true crime or tales of the more remote reaches of civilization, I recommend this book. Another engrossing account of life in the cold corners of the earth is Peter Freuchen’s Arctic Adventure, in which Freuchen details his assimilation into Inuit life and culture.
Overview
When Papa Pilgrim appeared in the Alaska frontier outpost of McCarthy with his wife and fifteen children in tow, his new neighbors had little idea of the trouble to come. The Pilgrim Family presented ...